The Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, over a dissent by three of its 29 judges, has denied
en banc review of panel rulings striking down same-sex marriage bans in Idaho
and Nevada.

The court handed
down its order late Friday.

Idaho officials,
led by Republican Gov. “Butch” Otter, lost in both the district and appellate
courts, but argued that en banc rehearing should be ordered because the ruling
conflicts with a Sixth Circuit decision upholding similar bans. That
circuit—consisting of Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee—is the only one
that has issued such a ruling.

—AP

Tara Traynor and
Cathy Grimes of Henderson, Nev. complete their marriage license application
at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau in Las Vegas following the Ninth
Circuit panel ruling in Sevcik v. Sandoval.

In Nevada,
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval and Democratic Attorney General Catherine Cortez
Masto, who just left office, said they could no longer defend that state’s ban
in light of last year’s ruling in SmithKlineBeecham Corporation v.
Abbott Laboratories, 11-17357. The court held in that case, which dealt
with peremptory challenges to prospective jurors that classifications based on
sexual orientation are subject to scrutiny, based on United States v.
Windsor (2013) 133 S.Ct. 2675, which held the federal government could not
refuse to recognize same-sex marriages that were upheld.

An intervenor,
the Coalition to Protect Marriage, continued to defend the Nevada ban, which
had been upheld by a district judge prior to the governor and attorney general
dropping out of the case.

In October, a
Ninth Circuit panel struck down the state bans. The U.S. Supreme Court declined
to stay those rulings.

In his dissent
Friday, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, joined by Judges Carlos Bea and Johnnie
Rawlinson, said that by denying en banc review, his colleagues have “utterly
ignored another circuit’s reasoned contribution to the debate.”

He also noted
that a 1971 Minnesota Supreme Court decision rejected a challenge to that state’s
same-sex marriage ban, and that for 42 years thereafter, no court anywhere held
to the contrary. States, he said, should be free to decide the issue for
themselves.

He cited the
ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld the right of reach
individual country to decide for themselves whether same-sex couples may marry.
Only 10 of the 31 countries subject to that court’s jurisdiction permit
same-sex marriage, the court noted.